The present invention relates in general to the manufacture of containers formed from paper products and, in particular, to a scoring apparatus for use in imparting scores to paper products such that they can be folded into useful products, such as corrugated containers. Scoring is the process of placing an indentation in a sheet of paper products to facilitate later folding along the resulting score line.
Most often paper products are formed into articles, such as containers, from continuous sheets of paper products. These continuous sheets of paper products are most often manipulated by automated machines in a continuous in-line process involving cutting, scoring and folding of the continuous sheets of paper products into multiple independent blanks of a desired configuration.
One paper product that is often used in the manufacture of paper products containers is liner board bonded corrugated medium. Liner board bonded corrugated medium typically consists of an inner liner board layer, an outer liner board layer and fluted, corrugated medium material adhesively sandwiched therebetween. In manufacturing paper products such as articles fabricated of such liner board bonded corrugated medium, there may be random variations in the position of the crest and groove pattern of the fluted corrugated medium, relative to the location of the score. While such random variations are acceptable in the construction of such paper product and even in paper product containers, such randomness has heretofore often interfered with the folding process, affecting the orientation of folded parts, and particularly paper product panel locations, after articulation into a container, for example.
Current scoring apparatuses utilize scoring profiles typically having a scoring bead and two integrated scoring shoulders, one on each side of the scoring bead. While only the scoring bead is necessary for directly imparting the score, each of the integrated shoulders typically comes into contact with the paper products, crushing a portion of the paper products on each side of the resulting score line. After such a scoring operation, the crushed regions formed by the shoulders are generally not readily visible because the elasticity of the paper products often results in near, visual restoration of the structure. However, the crushing of the paper material on each side of the score line nonetheless affects the folding of the article to, in turn, affect the orientation of adjacent product panels.
Paper product sheets that are scored directly upon a crest of the flutes generally fold as intended. However, paper products sheets that are scored by current scoring apparatuses with a score line parallel to, but distally spaced from a corrugated crest tend to fold randomly, because a portion of the paper product to each side of the score line is often affected by the integrated shoulders crushing each. Thus, upon folding, a panel on one side of a fold may be longer than the panel on the other side of the fold resulting in "manufacturer's gap variation," as explained more fully herein. Furthermore, folding may not be consistent throughout a single score line, resulting in "skewing," as explained more fully herein.
Paper product containers are usually shipped folded flat prior to articulation, in bundles from the container manufacturer to the customer. However due to this manufacturer's gap variation and skewing, the flattening and bundling of the flat paper products containers for shipping often becomes uneven and unpredictably orientated due to the random folding problems.
It is thus an object of the present invention to prevent and/or reduce skewing and to orchestrate acceptable manufacturer's gap variation by providing a scoring apparatus which reduces the occurrence of random yielding of scored paper products during folding.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent in light of the present specification, claims and drawings.